


Anchor

by bluebells



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek's pack miss their alpha, M/M, Pack Dynamics, Scott finally does what he's told, Sensory Deprivation, Stiles belligerently ignores orders as usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-13
Updated: 2012-08-13
Packaged: 2017-11-12 01:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebells/pseuds/bluebells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The scars around Derek’s eyes have long faded, but apparently nerve damage is resilient to the werewolf gene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anchor

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from [the lovely art](http://artmetica.livejournal.com/37129.html) that accidentally inspired by **artmetica**.
> 
> Thanks to **ladyknightanka** and **morganoconner** for their feedback in my first foray to a new fandom. You guys make it hard to resist.
> 
> ETA: Now with [podfic](http://www.mediafire.com/?xx6fy6ho4g815st) from the beautiful **emptyword**! Thank you so much!

He still dreams in colours, but, after several months, the shades are fading in his mind. The lines defining shape and form blur between his fingers when he reaches for the charred memory of his family's front door, the smooth wheel of the car he'll never drive again.

His head pounds when he wakes in the night with the afterimage of faces burned behind his eyelids: Laura's cautious glance, the gentle smirk that curved Peter's mouth.

Derek remembers Isaac's soft, wounded distress when Erica railed against Derek's order. The break in her voice betrayed her weakening resolve. Derek knew Boyd was with them then and, with Scott's help - Scott, who finally chose that moment to obey their alpha - they ran.

Derek's chest twists with the sharp hurt of his last memory of them, but now they're safe.

Or so Stiles tells him.

Stiles, who is the only human stupid enough to keep coming back. He weaves through the streets to the private storage facility where Laura hid what could be salvaged from their home under a pseudonym, lock and key.

It's Derek's last resort: a four-by-four cell of concrete and steel. Only a padlock separates him from a horde of Argents with creative means to grind him down to bloody ash if they find him.

Derek hears the _scuff-scuff-scuff_ of Stiles’s shoes between the shadows of the storage sheds. The thud of his heart pricks Derek's ear; heavy, once surprisingly slow. Not such a surprise anymore because Stiles keeps coming back, checking over his shoulder, and he's starting to convince Derek that he might know what he's doing.

Stiles's heart beats strong and steady. Derek's fists are uncurling on his knees, the cords of his muscles relaxing, before Stiles has even rolled up the garage door.

His scent hits Derek abruptly: the warm, thick cloy of paper worn between his fingers; of metal lockers and the oily residue of Beacon Hills's high school cafeteria; of musty blankets tangled too tight. Underneath the cloud of his classmates' perfume and the petrol of his jeep parked four blocks away, beneath the human's own deodorant and the fine mist of stale water sprinklers he ran through to get here, Derek can still smell the sharp tang of _Stiles_.

Something in his sweat makes Derek's nose twitch. It's the highly strung mechanics of a teenager who can rattle off three hundred words a minute, the stress and jitter along his nerves of always being the messenger and never the one whose message is heard. It's the anxiety of walking when you want to run, and standing, unflinching, in the headlights.

Stiles's heart drums steadily, but the lingering flavour of his scent dries rough and bitter on Derek's tongue.

"Sorry, I know I'm late -"

Derek claws the knee of his jeans. Sitting in the garage’s furthest corner on his makeshift bed of a single duvet and salvaged cushion, Derek waits for Stiles to roll the door down behind him. The gap closes with an assuring _clang_ of steel.

"You're always late," Derek says, jaw tight.

Stiles snorts in light offence. "Not true, I was fifteen minutes early that time Allison was staking out my house after lacrosse practice, and, God, that was awkward explaining to my dad."

Stiles drops his backpack by Derek's folded knee in a puff dust. His sigh is lost in a tight laugh.

"No, Dad, Allison doesn't want quality time with a friend because she lost her mom _and_ her boyfriend, she wants to huff and puff and blow our house down. She wants me to play little pig, hoping I'll squeal if she applies the right amount of pressure. And, yeah, you should lock her up for all the crimes she's going to commit on top of the ones I wish I could tell you about, but can't, because Allison thinks she's the werewolf's answer to Buffy, and - right - my best friend’s harbouring a triad of lupine runaways who won't stop howling at the moon because they've lost their alpha -"

Derek bites his tongue to keep the growl soft in his throat. "I can't be their alpha anymore."

Any day now, the shame might hurt a little less.

"Dude, this isn't really up for discussion because it's either follow you or leave Scott and the rest of them to the guy who mauled the love of my life, and I'm not letting any of them follow him through an ice storm in hell. So... obviously, it's... you."

Did despair always smell like three month old cheese and rusted metal? It isn’t a good change for Stiles.

Derek feels the muscle beneath his eye twitch. "Stiles, look at me."

He can almost hear the shrug.

"Yeah, I see you, big guy."

And there's the rub. Derek snorts, shaking his head. "But I can't see you. How can I lead them if I can't see the cliffs ahead?"

"Ouch." That's definitely a wince. Derek hears the subtle creak and shift of Stiles's bones and muscle, lowering himself into a crouch. "I need to cut some windows and let the sun in before you start clawing dark, red poetry into the walls with the ochre of your blood."

Derek doesn't snarl, but it's close. "I can still rip your throat out with my teeth."

Stiles coos like it's an old affection, and Derek does bare his fangs then. "But then who'd work on your cure?"

"Just hurry up. And get your hand off my shoulder.”

“Okay, okay, I’m removing my hand, you sour --”

“ _Stiles._ ”

“ _Okay!_ Will the patient please tilt their head up? Dude.”

Derek forces out a tight breath, then careful fingers tip his chin and a thumb brushes his cheekbone. The scars around Derek’s eyes have long faded, but apparently nerve damage is resilient to the werewolf gene. Peter’s light charm annoys its way into Derek’s ear, _I could have told you that._

Somehow, he thinks Kate is laughing at him from beyond the grave.

Derek stares up and into darkness, where the shape and form of Stiles should reconcile with the hush of his sigh, his cold fingertips and the scent that’s warming to anticipation.

Derek blinks at the first drops of Stiles’s experimental cure in his eyes, frowns when... well, nothing.

“Wait, hold still,” Stiles says, administering the drops to Derek’s other eye. Derek’s mouth twists as he forces himself to obey.

He’s been sitting through this for what must be weeks. Trusting the future of his sight - of his pack’s survival - on a _high school student’s_ promise that he can fix Derek, because Stiles tells him they still have time. Erica, Boyd and Isaac - Scott is keeping them safe, they’ll wait for him, but they can’t be safe with the full moon coming. Their wolves will come out. The hunters will hear. They should have gone ahead and --

\-- God. If they’ve been howling... why hasn’t Derek heard them?

God. Why are his eyes....?

GOD.

“Dammit, Stiles!” Derek roars, rubbing the heels of his hands against the acid burning away his eyes. It will probably keep eating through the rest of his skull.

Hands catch his wrists.

“No, it’s okay, it’s not acid! Derek, it must mean it’s working!” And Derek must have said some of that aloud because Stiles is _laughing_ , bright and joyful like his victory was always meant to be painted in the shade of red throbbing through Derek’s head.

… Wait. Red?

“-- Lydia helped me this time, don’t freak out, I know you don’t trust her after she blew flower dust in your face, but she’s the best chemist I know and - dude, stop rubbing your eyes!”

“I need water,” Derek gasps. His eyes are on fire. He’s being set on fire from the inside.

“Stop rubbing, I promise - here! Here, okay, open your eyes.” Stiles tugs ineffectually at his wrists. Anger curls in his voice. “Derek, open your damn eyes!”

Everything in Derek howls that the moment he stops pressing and lets Stiles tug his hands away, the pain will only intensify. He also knows that Stiles is right. Air shudders in his throat, but he can’t hold back the roar of pain in the moment it takes for Stiles to tip the water in his eyes.

It trickles in a thin and careful stream (no, no, no - need more, please, it hurts), fingers hold Derek’s jaw again, and the shock of _Stiles_ erupts on his tongue as the water slides down his face, slipping between his lips.

The water tastes like Stiles.

Derek is so stunned that it momentarily pierces the fog of agony, and he realises it must be... Stiles must be using a bottle he had to drink from, lingering long enough to leave some of himself behind. All those scents that Derek caught on the air layer thick on his tongue like syrup: bed and books, an aftertaste of almonds, and a rougher, dark shape of _something_ that swells so abruptly in his senses.

Stiles tastes like the woods: like the bark of the trees, crisp leaves, wet soil and the weathered rocks at the turn to Derek’s house.

Stiles tastes like the world outside where his wolf yearns to run. The illusion of that rough, oaken syrup spills down Derek’s throat so easily, he shivers and realises that it’s more than the recognition of outside - it’s home.

From Stiles’s mouth to Derek’s eyes.

There is no way that’s sanitary.

Stiles lands somewhere on the garage floor with an ‘umph’ of surprise.

Derek stands, shaking. His world is two-thirds raging white pain and his eyes are going to explode any minute. Or melt. There is no lesser evil, and he is absolutely not going to stomach the way his wolf is growling to pin Stiles and see what else he tastes like.

 _No._ It’s... it’s Stiles, it’s --

“Now you’re trying to get me infected, too?”

“Big bad alpha Hale is a baby!” Stiles grunts, skin and cloth sliding on concrete. Pushing himself up. “I thought you wanted to get better!”

“You’re going to kill me!” Derek roars.

“I’m going to save you!” Stiles shouts back, stopping Derek in shock. “I’m going to save you, you’re going to save your little pack, and you’re going to run and never look back. They’re _waiting_ for you, Derek.”

Derek’s hands are shaking when he touches the wet skin around his eyes. It feels like it should be raw; it isn’t.

“We can’t outrun them. I can’t--” he starts, but Stiles is already there.

“Yes, you will.” A careful step forward. “Let me help you.”

Derek doesn’t say ‘yes’, but he doesn’t stop Stiles when hands find his face again. He’s never noticed before that Stiles has long, slender fingers. He forgets to stop himself from turning into the warmth of the palm on his cheek. Stiles’s skin isn’t as soft as he expects, maybe from all those years wringing things in his hands; staring at the road ahead, always glancing back.

“Maybe you can be a teenager again, at the end of all this,” Derek says.

“There’s an end to this?” Stiles laughs, and he sounds too bleak for someone who can’t even legally drown their sorrows with a drink.

“Stiles.” Derek sighs, shaking his head. Maybe next time it will work.

“Sorry, I know -- hands.”

But Derek catches his hand, holds it fast against his cheek, when he feels the scowl of disappointment threaten his mouth again. Stiles is perfectly still.

“Derek.” His voice is a quiet summons, rallying Derek’s thoughts back, and Derek sighs.

He releases Stiles, but, instead of moving away, Stiles’s other hand cups his face. His touch is so careful, so --

“Derek, your eyes....”

It seems unfair that, after weeks of frustration, the cure takes effect in minutes. Red fades to grey, fades to white, fades to --

“Hey.” Stiles’s face is a blur of a smile in the warm light of the lamp by their feet. Relief splits apart like brittle bone in Derek’s chest, ratcheting his breath, and Stiles doesn’t pull away when Derek’s fingers curl around his wrists. “There you are.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on Livejournal](http://users.livejournal.com/_bluebells/74771.html).


End file.
